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Western Cape Premier Alan Winde and Mayor of Cape Town Geordin Hill-Lewis say the province’s 680 000 housing backlog, and increasing unaffordability, are products of inward migration due to their superb management.

The fact is that Gauteng has experienced significantly more inward migration than the Western Cape over the past 30 years. Nonetheless, blaming migration for the City’s housing crisis is easier for the Premier and Mayor than explaining.

1.       Why, year-by-year, they are building fewer and fewer subsidised homes;

2.       Why they have enabled the development of a runaway short-term rental market at the expense of alleviating the local housing shortage;

3.       Why they continue to sell well-located properties (public assets under their management) to private developers.

4.       Why they have built no affordable homes in the inner city or surrounding areas;

5.       Why they have slavishly adhered to the city’s apartheid spatial plan;

6.       Why Cape Town retains its status as among the most unequal cities on earth.

There are multiple and varied reasons for people to migrate to the Western Cape. They include:

1.       Cape Town’s position in the global tourism market due to its natural beauty, hospitality, wine and tourism industries.

2.       The belief among some that Cape Town is better run;

3.       The global urbanisation trend, particular apparent in South Africa after the dropping of what used to be called influx control to stop the movement of African people; and

4.       The fact that select parts of Cape Town, where the middle-class lives, are well managed and maintained.

This combination of factors has been a boon for property owners and speculators in relatively well-heeled areas, while blocking access to the market for locals. Cape Town’s inner city embodies this transaction: Thousands of apartments developed over the past 20 years, which might have been affordable, but the vast majority of them are listed on Airbnb.

This is not a product of Cape Town’s success but of social engineering by the DA to maintain the city’s old status quo. Social engineering that prioritises the same class of people who were privileged in the past, and the values of their properties, at the expense of poorer people, integration, social justice and long-term sustainability.

These are not the subjective political views of an opposition political party. The Premier and Mayor have five weeks left to report to the Constitutional Court on its plans and progress in addressing the social housing issue, in terms of the Tafelberg School judgement.  

The DA has led Cape Town for 20 years and the Western Cape for 18 years. Concourt is unlikely to view the argument that the City is an innocent victim of its success very kindly.

Issued by GOOD Secretary-General & City of Cape Town mayoral candidate Brett Herron